Exodus 8:3
And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneadingtroughs:
The verse is a warning given beforehand that if Pharaoh refused to let Israel go to serve God in sacrifice, God would smite all his borders with frogs, giving Pharaoh the chance to save himself from judgment by obedience. The warning was fulfilled as the second plague when the rod was stretched over the waters and Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters, and the river brought forth frogs abundantly which came up and covered the land of Egypt. They spread over the country into houses and bedchambers and upon beds and into the house of servants and upon the people and even into ovens and kneadingtroughs, swarming even in Pharaoh's palace until the nuisance became intolerable. The Nile brought them up in great numbers to spread through Egyptian homes and daily life.
The frog was sacred to the Egyptians, so they would not destroy it. The plague polluted the Nile, which was revered as a sacred object, turning it into a source of pollution and torment to show that the river could not protect those who worshiped it and that Jehovah had power over it. The frogs came by the power of the living God as one of the mighty signs and wonders wrought through Moses to convince Pharaoh that the great I AM had sent him to command release that Israel might serve Him. They were not produced by magic or by any human influence or power of Moses and Aaron, and God alone could remove them.
The magicians by their enchantments appeared to bring up similar frogs, but they could not stay the plague or remove the frogs, which exposed the limits of their power and Pharaoh's former boasting and haughty glorying in his magicians. Through the magicians Satan was on the ground working by the power of his god the Devil to counterfeit the true work of God. His counterfeit had a two-fold purpose of destroying the influence of what God did through Moses and reaching down through all ages to destroy true faith in the mighty miracles Christ would perform when He came, for he trembled for his kingdom and the power he held over mankind. It was calculated to harden Pharaoh's heart against God's power, to stagger the faith of Moses and Aaron in the divine origin of their mission, and to keep Israel from release from Egyptian servitude to serve God.
God's work was shown superior to Satan's power, for the magicians could perform only a few of the miracles God wrought through Moses, and God would not suffer Satan to proceed further. The work through Moses prefigured Christ's first advent to break Satan's power over the human family and deliver those made captives by his power. Pharaoh was impatient and somewhat humbled and began to know something of the God he had claimed to be ignorant of. He had to ask Moses and Aaron to entreat the Lord to stay the plague and take the frogs away, promising to let the people go to sacrifice.
Moses gave Pharaoh the honor of naming the time and set that the frogs would be destroyed from houses to remain in the river only, reminding him of his former haughty glorying and boasting over Moses in his magicians, so that he might know there is none like the Lord God. Pharaoh set the next day for the removal at an appointed time, in hope the frogs would disappear by themselves. The plague lasted until the appointed time, when at prayer the living frogs were removed but the dead frogs remained. They were left to die where they were throughout all Egypt rather than being made to vanish or return to dust in a moment, so their bodies lay before the Egyptians and were gathered into heaps whose putrid corrupting of the atmosphere polluted the land.
This manner of removal was lest the king and his people and the Egyptians call the removal sorcery or enchantment like the work of the magicians, giving proof that the work was not magic but a judgment from the God of heaven. Pharaoh's hard heart had not been moved by the rod becoming a serpent and the river turned to blood, because the work of the magicians led him to believe those miracles were performed by magic and only increased his hatred of Israel. The removal of the frogs gave him and all Egypt abundant evidence to the contrary that their vain philosophy could not dispose of. The frogs overspreading the land and forcing their way everywhere picture the immense tide of periodicals and books now overspreading the land and pressing into the mind. Like those frogs they are not merely commonplace, idle and enervating but unclean and degrading, and their effect is not merely to intoxicate and ruin the mind but to corrupt and destroy the soul.